Some packages really need documentation to be usable?

Question

I have installed arch64 on my laptop yesterday and I have found that I like it really much. Anyway, I realized that I will have to do some work to download all the docs I need to use my computer as I usually use it (I usually play with -dev packages, like gtk(mm) and wxwidgets, and with math programs, like maxima). I will also have to download docs on how to configure my nvidia card to use twinview, even if I actually have no plan to use it. So, because I like arch and I want to give some ideas back, why not do a poll to see how many users are satisfied by arch's current policy (basically, rm -rf /usr/share/doc) and how many would like something different? Something different would be -doc packages for packages with huge documentation (for example gtk) and integrated READMEs for package with little documentation (for example the NVIDIA driver docs). Well.. lets see what people think about that..

Answer 1

average_joe2 wrote:An example is programming
This is a bad example, IMHO, since as phrakture said, you get more up-to-date API documentation online. I would never dream of using offline-documentation when I'm coding, I always keep a web-browser open to the page containing stuff I need. Well I used to when I didn't know it all by heart anyway. It must be time to learn something new.
another example is using a non-trivial app, like maxima.
or online: http://maxima.sourceforge.net/docs/manu … ima_1.html
I haven't used this one, never heard of it. When I was playing with Blender (perhaps the most non-trivial app!!), I recall downloading one tutorial, but again, I mostly read everything online. I just bookmarked it. My web browser is never closed that way.
"info" format, like grub.
or online: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html
Your point about this being package-dependent is valid, but I'd  say that it will be hard to find a package in this day and age that doesn't post its docs online. And if it doesn't, I say that package is broken.
When I was on dialup, I loved the fact Arch didn't install docs for me, cause it saved on my downloading. The one document I couldn't live without back then was the Java 1.5 API... and it was a pain to get online. In that case, I did download the whole thing and store it offline, but for everything else, google gave me the docs I needed. Now that I have a super-fast always on connection, google gives me the docs I need completely painlessly. I've personally never missed offline documentation, and I appreciate my hard drive being clear.
That being said, there's nothing stopping a group of people from creating some documentation packages and either putting PKGBUILDs in AUR or creating their own repository. I just have to say it is in direct conflict with Arch's philosophy to include docs with the packaging. It was a fundamental part of Judd's initial design decision with the 0.1 release and before.
Dusty